History: Course Structure

Oxford’s terminology can be bewildering to the uninitiated, but the key distinction in understanding the structure of the course is that between the Preliminary Examination and Finals. The Preliminary Examination describes the course of study during the first year, and Finals refers to the work done over the following two years. Some College tutors like to ensure that undergraduates are taught within College during their first year, and they may restrict your choice of options. It is a good idea to check with Colleges about their policy if there are particular first year options you are anxious to study. Access to some of the more over-subscribed final-year options may be limited.

During the first year students study a mixture of papers designed to introduce them to ways of studying the subject different from those they have encountered at school, and to equip them with skills appropriate to the work they do later in the course. They choose one period of British history, in which political developments are related to the broader contexts of social, economic, and cultural change, and one period of European History, which is taught in a thematic fashion, enabling students to sharpen their understanding of key historical concepts. Skills acquired at school in source criticism are built upon through an optional subject in which a historical problem is studied through contemporary source materials. For their fourth subject students work on historical skills and methods, looking at the writings of a leading historian in a foreign language or exploring the application of quantitative techniques to historical research, or they take one of the papers on Approaches to History or the History of Historical Writing mentioned above.

In the two years of study for Finals students take a mixture of outline courses and more specialist ones. Students choose (in varying and flexible combinations) two courses of British and non-British History (including American History and European and Overseas Expansion) from the great variety on offer. Students are encouraged to develop interests and approaches fostered during their first year. The Further Subject and the Special Subject both allow students to work on a historical problem in a professional manner, critically engaging with primary printed materials. Both these subjects are chosen from lists of about twenty options covering most of the globe, and reflecting various approaches to history.

The Oxford History course aims to combine specialization with breadth and reflection. All students are required to take a paper in the Disciplines of History in which they draw together materials from the component elements of the course and place them in a broader and often more theoretical context.

All students doing History as a Single Honours Course write a thesis in their final year. By doing a thesis students are able to undertake independent research based on the study of original sources with guidance from their tutors. Writing one can be an exciting and intellectually invigorating experience and the best are published.

First Year (The Preliminary Examination)

Students study four papers and sit an examination at the end of the first year.

  1. History of the British Isles. A choice of seven options is available:
  1. General History (primarily European). A choice of four options is available:
  1. A paper on historical methods. A variety of options is available. ‘Approaches to History’ involves an examination of interdisciplinary ways of studying history; ‘Historiography: Tacitus to Weber’ looks at great historians and their works; Quantification in History provides an introduction to the use of statistics in historical investigation; and the Foreign Texts option allows students to study one or two seminal historical works in a foreign language (options in Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian are available).
  1. An Optional Subject involving the use of primary sources. The following are currently available although there may be some variation from year to year.

 

The Second and Third Years

  1. One of the papers of British History which you did not study in the first year.
  1. A period of General History (chosen from eighteen options, which cover the whole of European History and its engagement with the non-European world from the fall of Rome until 1973, with additional papers in American History and the History of the wider world in the nineteenth century.
  1. A Further Subject, in which a historical problem is studied with the use of documents. The subjects available vary slightly from year to year according to the availability of teaching resources, but there are usually around twenty to choose from. Those currently available are:
  1. A Special Subject involving the in-depth study of a historical problem, usually covering a shorter period than the Further Subject. Each of these subjects is studied intensively with the use of primary sources in set documents. The availability of Special Subjects varies slightly from year to year, but there are usually over twenty to choose from. Assessment consists of one paper and one extended essay. At present the Special Subjects are:
    1. St Augustine and the Last Days of Rome, 370-430
    2. Francia in the Age of Clovis and Gregory of Tours
    3. Byzantium in the Age of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 913–959
    4. The Norman Conquest of England 
    5. Royal Art and Architecture in Norman Sicily, 1130–94
    6. Saint Francis and Saint Clare
    7. England in Crisis, 1374–88
    8. Joan of Arc and her Age, 1419–35
    9. Painting and Culture in Ming China
    10. Politics, Art and Culture in the Italian Renaissance: Venice and Florence, c. 1475–1525  
    11. Luther and the German Reformation
    12. Government, Politics and Society in England, 1547–1558 
    13. The Scientific Movement in the Seventeenth Century 
    14. Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1647–1658 
    15. The Dutch Golden Age, c. 1618-1672
    16. English Architecture, 1660–1720
    17. Debating Social Change in Britain and Ireland, 1770-1825
    18. Church, State and English Society, 1829–1854 
    19. Growing Up in the Middle Class Family: Britain, 1830-70
    20. Slavery and the Crisis of the Union, 1854–1865 
    21. Political Pressures and Social Policy, 1899–1914
    22. Art and its Public in France, 1815-67
    23. The Russian Revolution of 1917 
    24. India, 1919–1939: Contesting the Nation
    25. The Sex Age: Gender, Sexuality and Culture in 1920s Britain
    26. The Great Society Era, 1960–70
    27. Nazi Germany, a Racial Order, 1933–1945
    28. France from the Popular Front to the Liberation, 1936–1944  
    29. War and Reconstruction: Ideas, Politics and Social Change, 1939–45
    30. Britain from the Bomb to the Beatles: gender, class, and social change, 1945-1967
    31. The Northern Ireland Troubles, 1965–1985
    32. The Evolution of a Modern Metropolis, London 1955–1975
  1. Disciplines of History. This paper enables you to study comparative history, how to approach the different sources of history and different traditions in historiography and to examine the ways in which historians have tackled the writing of history.
  1. A compulsory thesis. By doing a thesis students are able to undertake independent research with guidance from their tutors. Theses will usually be based on the study of original sources. Writing a thesis can be an exciting and intellectually invigorating experience.

 

University of Oxford

Faculty of History

Last updated: 22 March, 2011